Kǒngquè jīng yīnyì 孔雀經音義
Phonetic and Lexical Glosses on the Peacock-King Sūtra (Jp. Kujakukyō ongi) by 觀靜 (Kanjō, 撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle Japanese Shingon scholastic yīnyì 音義 (phonetic-and-lexical commentary) on the Fómǔ dà Kǒngquè míngwáng jīng 佛母大孔雀明王經 (KR6j0167, T19n0982) — Amoghavajra’s translation of the Mahāmāyūrī-vidyārājñī-sūtra — composed by Kanjō 觀靜 (觀靜), who identifies himself in the prefatory matter as a “meditation-monk of the Eastern Mountains [Higashiyama]” 日本東山坐禪沙門.
Prefaces
The work opens with an extensive doctrinal preface (將釋此經。略開三門。初述大意。次釋題目。後入文判釋), in which Kanjō frames the Mahāmāyūrī within the structure of standard Shingon doctrinal exegesis: he announces that the commentary will treat (1) the great-meaning 大意 (general doctrinal frame), (2) the title 題目 (lexical-and-semantic analysis), and (3) the sequential textual exegesis 文判釋. The preface adopts the conventional Shingon scholastic apparatus — the Six Great Elements 六大, the Three Mysteries 三密, the Five Wisdoms 五智, and the distinction between exoteric 顯 and esoteric 祕 readings — and explicitly distinguishes “exoteric titles” (those that select a single meaning from many) from “esoteric titles” (those in which one syllable contains infinite meaning). The preface concludes by aligning the Mahāmāyūrī with the self-nature dharmakāya (自性法身) speech of Mahāvairocana, framing it as an immediate enlightenment (即身成佛) teaching rather than a merely apotropaic ritual scripture.
Abstract
The Kǒngquè jīng yīnyì is a textual-philological-and-doctrinal commentary that combines three distinct exegetical modes: (1) phonetic glosses on the Sanskrit dhāraṇī syllables and proper names that appear throughout T982, with the underlying-Sanskrit values reconstructed by reference to Amoghavajra’s translation conventions and to comparable transliteration models elsewhere in the Esoteric canon; (2) lexical glosses on technical Buddhist terms (the various classes of yakṣas, gandharvas, bhūta-spirits, nāga-kings, etc. that populate the scripture’s apotropaic catalogues), drawing on the Yaśomitra and other Indian commentarial sources where these were available to Kanjō; and (3) doctrinal exposition of the scripture’s place within the Shingon Esoteric system, particularly its relationship to the Mahāvairocana-sūtra and to the Vajraśekhara corpus. The text is among the principal Japanese yīn-yì commentaries on an Esoteric translation and forms part of the developed Heian-Kamakura scholastic apparatus for the Mahāmāyūrī cult.
The work is uncertainly dated. Kanjō himself is otherwise unidentified in the canonical-biographical record, and the work bears no preface or colophon dating. The conventional bracket on internal grounds (the developed post-Kūkai Shingon scholastic apparatus presupposed throughout) is the mid-to-late Heian — somewhere between the late 11th and late 12th centuries; the date range above reflects this defensible spread, though the work could be slightly later (early Kamakura).
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.